Gerard Meijssen wrote:
I have read with amusement the arguments why the
Wikispecies project may
not be a good idea by some of the ToL people. As much as I admire the
work that went into the ToL and still goes into the ToL, it is also a
project that has proven in the past that it is not open and willing to
cooperate outside of its own project. When I asked to consider
cooperation to come to a universal wikipedia taxobox, the answer was
look at all our previous discussions things have been decided,, no we
won't have that all over again.
I think you are bringing your own baggage to the debate here and are
uncriticising most ToL participants unfairly.
Only mav has out right said he doesn't like the idea of a separate
wikimedia wikispecies project.
I asked to proceed cautiously, wanting to understand more about the two
projects would interact before giving it my support.
The other 20-odd people listed as ToL participants have said nothing at
all on this thread, and some have indicated to Benedikt in private that
they are very pleased about the project.
Further the ToL project participants _have_ tentatively gone down the
internationalization route - the templates are called {{Regnum}} not
{{Kingdom}} etc, for example. What other WikiProjects have decided to
help out internationalization to the detriment of their local project? I
know of none.
The Wikispecies can have aspects that the current ToL
does not have. It
could have all published names with links to the author and the people
making up the author attribute and obviously the publication. It could
specify the basionym. It could specify what the next revision of a
description is with the author, the persons, the publication data. It
could have the scientific description as they are inherently public
domain. It could have pictures from WikiCommons. It could have the nomen
nudum, the nomen
I agree that a proper database would be the right way to do this in the
context of providing advanced searches, rather than trying to cobble
something together with templates and categories in mediawiki.
That said, the information you specify would, I am sure, be welcome in
ToL pages.